I don't know what it is, I love go, I love the feel of the stones, and filling the board, I love the discussions at the end of the game with friends over some coffee, but I have never once had a good time playing Go online. When I play go in person, I could get rofl stomped, I could lose many times in a row to someone infinitely better than I am, and have a blast. I like the feeling of stones, and filling the board. Discussing the game with friends even if it was horrible and I made obvious mistakes.I love that!!!

BUT HOLY MO#$&*^&#$(*@#&ING SH*&@^#*(T I HATE losing online to some faceless detritus from china or w/e. These people do nothing but make aggravating overplays to lure you into getting curb stomped with shards of teeth laying around you lose so bad.

I was introduced to the game in COlorado SPrings, and there was a lone group of inbred, social inept people, with 3 really badass guys that I loved to hang with, and they taught me a lot about the game, and since they've all moved I can't seem to find a single person in real life interested in playing a game, not even interested in learning the game, let alone learning it's name. I have taught 3 or 4 people, and yet none of them have shown any interest past the first 2 or 3 games each. Does ANYONE live near greeley, colorado and want to meet and play IN REAL LIFE so I can stop this bull detritus online detritus?


I haven't played a game in almost a year because I hate playing online so much, I study, I do life and death problems all the time, half the apps on my phone are go apps. I watch pro games, I replay kifu, I love the game, but blast there is just no place to play here.

Whenever I run into any difficulty, hardship, or adversity in life,
I never look at my own problems, weaknesses, selfishness, laziness, or stupidity;
I always blame others for their ridiculous behaviors and unfair advantages.
If only everyone was like me — the world would be paradise.

Also, please check out the Forum Rules .

Well, it seems you're pointing at two different things : playing online and people making overplays.

Making overplays is by no means restricted to online go players so you (will) have to deal with that also IRL.
Kageyama has some good words on how to react whan your opponent overplays, basically it's all about rejoicing because you're given the occasion to make him suffer

If you do not like playing online for other reasons than overplays then do not play online. I recently play less on KGS than before because I've noticed that people there are less polite than I used to remember. Opponents are treated like bots, cheating has become widespread and all of this gives me an uneasy feeling. Of course the wisest course of action would have been to learn from that and try to grow as a human being but I just got lazy and started playing an IGS

that's really what I was getting at. faceless nameless people treating everyone like trash, no forgiveness for a 5 year old laptop mouse that misclicks all the time, and really just horrible ui's also, with horrible sound. it's the year 2014 and the best go ui was one that nobody played on the xbox 360? Why does everyone still use a 1990's modem era chat prgram with a board attached called KGS? It's horribly programmed, unintuitive and ancient....

SO yeah i have other problems with playing online. I WANT to play in person, but as i mentioned nobody wishes to learn let alone play once they learn

Seriously check out path of go for xbox 360, it's a beautiful UI especially in HD and the method for placing stones meant NO MISCLICKS... but unfortunately my nly opponent was the BOT. I mean there's even animated people sitting at the board, with great audio... I don't understand why kgs is still a thing.

How can we help?

edit: bear in mind that "nameless faceless people from China or w/e" may have a command of English equalling your command of Cantonese "or w/e". As a US citizen you may have become used to the idea that the world converses in your native language, but especially with nameless faceless people from China, I wouldn't take that political fortuity for granted any longer, not to mention the people from w/e.

Regarding misclicks on your laptop, are you aware of the KGS mouse anti-slip system? It might help.

You might also try playing slow games and playing out the game on a real board at home (I think Ed does this). This way you get the tactile experience you value. Also in my experience online unpleasantness is rarer in slow games. Also rather than just playing in the EGR, try joining a club/lesson room like the Beginners Room or KGS Teaching Ladder with a more social atmosphere. Games there will probably be nicer.

But you should try to approach this with an open mind, as if you go into it thinking "I hate playing Go online" then your negative attitude will simply become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well, to be honest, I think that with that attitude I would not even play you if you lived next door.

You need to calm down and learn to enjoy both go and life more. There are lots of good people online but if you don't make a point of looking for them you will not find them. Also, if you are that desperate, Greeley is only an hour or so from Fort Collins and Boulder and both have active clubs.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

• Cf. http://senseis.xmp.net/?OnlineGoAnxiety
  
• Slow correspondence games, for example on ☯GS (OGS, Online Go server, online-go.com
  
• First perhaps play with people you “know” (virtually)

I’ve been affected with OGA, too, similar symptoms: no problems with losing Real Life games, but anonymously it is hard and sometimes gives me tachycardia … so for the time being I switched to slow correspondence games, and the very most live games are with people I’ve made acquaintance with already and also “talked” a few words with.

I’m aware that all this probably shows how neurotic I am … but since things are how they are PLUS I live in a Go diaspora I needed to find a way to be able to play Go online


Greetings, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

I've always found Warrior/Elementalists to be rather pleasant chaps, albeit a bit violent at times. YMMV

_________________
"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

Oh, and BTW, I don’t see any need to blame anybody else for my OGA, and, as said, I think it’s “just” my own neurosis. Anybody else have the same right to theirs And if somebody beats me in Go, they simply played better than I did, no need to put them down

Greetings, Tom
thinks that neuroses are spread evenly among people no matter their ethnic roots

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

You seem to idealize "real life" go (maybe because you only played with friends?) and see only the bad sides of online go.
As I said in my first post, you will also encounter people treating you like trash IRL. In fact, some of the most unpleasing people I met were go players.

And there's also the fact that you have the possibility to buy a new mouse and thus eliminate this source of anger/frustration. Have you realized that people might be annoyed by constant undos because it makes them feel like you're not paying attention to the game or because it breaks their concentration or because they start reading sequences just to have you play another move? It is well possible that at this very moment someone is posting on a chinese go forum and complaining about western "detritus" constantly asking for undos...

if that's all it takes to deter you to play go, then it will be very hard for you to improve

go is continually about stuff you don't know and stuff that people somehow get away with
take the loss, try to learn something from it, and play again
in 2 months that painful loss won't matter

another way of looking at it, is that its a way for you to prove your strength.

unfortunatley in this day and age, it will be near impossible for you to improve w/o playing some sort of Go online.

Cheating, widespread on KGS? What do you mean by that? I never noticed anything like that. Of course, I mostly play slow games with 1k-2d opponents, so maybe that's a thing that only other ranks or blitzers suffer. In example, I frequently notice kyu players complaining about escapers, but almost never see them at dan level.
"Treating people like bots" is a familiar feeling from random opponents. Expecting anything more than "hi gg" and "thx" from them is too optimistic, but that was true even 7 years ago, not recent development as far as I can see. I solve this problem by hanging out in rooms dedicated to studying or club rooms. ASR League comes to mind as an excellent example. Want to play thinking opponent who will review it with you? Go to one of these rooms.
There are all kinds of different players online, and finding the kind you like to play with is, well, maybe not very easy, but not horrendously hard too.

I feel like all forums need to have moderators who act like this

I'm 7k KGS, and don't notice escapers either. One thing that does irritate me is when I get a player who accepts the game I put up, and then complains that I acutally use the time. Thankfully, that's a fairly rare occurrence.

Funny, I heard similar words recently, spoken about playing face-to-face.
Like... What the heck is that, wood? STONES?? What, are we in 2000BC? Its 21st century, for Pete's sake, can't we find nothing better to play with than frigging wood and stones? What is next, sticks?? Can't anybody make a better set? Why do I have to play with such an old design, this game must really be crappy if nobody cares to create a better set. Wood and stones, really.... its so... caveman!

Needless to say, this person much prefers the 1990s interface to a 2000BC one.
From what you say, I assume you would as well.

It takes all kinds to make the universe.

Anyways, we often need to accept what we have, do without, or work to create something better. Bitching is usually counterproductive. This is what I said to that other guy.

But between us, I think bitching can sometimes help as well. I've seen it happen.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I am not going to respond to the bile in the OP but I do actually want to respond to the topic.

I have a "no undo" policy when playing online. I find it less stressful to make a blanket, unambiguous policy than to entertain the debate over whether a missclick was genuine or not. Being well briefed in the nature of the Internet, I do not feel that this is out of place, online.

I bend this policy when I know my opponent in real life.

I have seldom experienced online opponents treating people badly. Occasionally, you meet a denizen of the Internet on the Internet but this is rare in the Go community - even on KGS. Resigning from a soon-to-be-won game with such a denizen is incredibly liberating - for sufferers of O.G.A., I imagine that it would be similar to an alcoholic decanting a bottle of whisky into the sink. (Off-topic: A sinful waste!)

I also have a theory about O.G.A., built from experience of all forms of online competition: Simply put, if we're down the pub, with pints in hand, and you beat me, I can take some pleasure in the fact that you won. You are a real person with every right to win, at least half of the time. I take no pleasure giving a victory to an online account (particularly an IGS salon account)

This is not unique to Go. I spent my late adolescence playing Starcraft at LAN parties and spent a good six months of my adulthood playing Starcraft II online. The experiences exhibited similar contrasts.

It's perfectly fine to not wanting to play online. I know quite some, that never play or want to play online.
However, then you might find it difficult to find someone to play with ... but where's a will, there's a way (see what DrStraw advised where to look).

Escaping happens, and most go-servers have a possibility to use blacklists for such people, so you only have to play them once.

If you like certain UIs or not is a matter of taste. Nowadays there are quite a lot different go-servers, that you might try (KGS, IGS, Tygem, wbaduk, Funnode, DGS, OGS, or see sensei's library for more). From time to time you might wanna try out another server to see if there are more "friendly" people around, that fit your definition.

I think O.G.A. has a more fundamental explanation, and one that has little to do with Go in and of itself.

Most people playing online likely play ranked games. Most face-to-face games are likely friendly and non-ranked. (I have no data to support either assertion.) Who we are as individuals in modern society is based largely on evaluative rankings of some form or another, both subtle and explicit. From birth to death, we are inundated with criteria that measure our worth through some type of ranking – developmentally, educationally, economically, racially, ethnically, sexually, and on and on. This causes anxiety for almost everyone, certainly for those who fail to adequately measure up.

For example, as a new grandfather, I've watched as my daughter is routinely informed of my grandson's developmental rankings (plural) and what she and her husband need to do to improve this or that measure. It's infuriating to watch, but…instilling fear and inadequacy on new parents via their children is quite a lucrative system for healthcare providers – solutions looking for problems.

Ranking is an inherent part of Go as it must be. But, given the suffocating, anxiety-producing measures by which we all live and breathe in today's world, which in no way, shape, or form are inherently necessary, it's no wonder that O.G.A. is a problem for many Go players.

_________________
"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen